The Time Has Come to Share J. H. Emails Full of Poison

 To read an AI-polished version of this blog, click HERE

Hi S, 

Sorry, it took me so long to respond to your last comment. Now I only write while I’m at work because the little girl within me doesn’t want me to sit on the desk at home writing -- rather be playing -- doing things I like and hanging with my cats --  so if work is busy, I’m not writing at all! As I have shared many times before, I'm extremely dyslexic, and writing is one of the hardest things to do in life. 

I have learned that nothing I can write, say, or do will do much to help humanity wake up from its deep repression --- so from now on I will just write if I have the time at work and if I feel like it

I also worked on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas!

Also, the little girl within me doesn’t like me to be on social media anymore, so my presence on social media will be limited from now on, too! Like Alice Miller once wrote: “Of course, the Internet allows everybody to show themselves, their emotional insights as well as their emotional blindness,” and I have grown tired of the predominance of people's emotional blindness on social media!

Yes, it has been quite a road I have been on! And I’m very proud of my journey! I’m free at last!

And this is one of the reasons I was targeted by very repressed people because they got envious of me and they wanted to steal my freedom and remove my permanent smile off my face forever, but my smile is real! Not fake like theirs! What I have can't be bought with money, and I can’t be stolen! And this is why they were so envious that they gathered all the forces at their command, trying to destroy my life!

The only way for people to stop abusing children is to face and resolve their own repression, otherwise, they will be driven by the repressed emotions of the child they once were into the state of repetition compulsion, sooner or later, in one form or another, to abuse others -- especially their own children – if a layperson like me -- can see this clearly -- and understand these psychological mechanisms -- then the real question should be why the talented, gifted, formally educated, and so much more intelligent can’t see and understand these psychological mechanisms?! Childhood repression affects everyone to a degree, layperson or not!

Education alone is nothing more than one more big illusion! The more talented, gifted, and sharp a person's intellect is, the more they master the art of compartmentalization, dissociation, and create elaborate rationalizations, lies, and illusions to help them run from facing and consciously feeling their own repression and painful truths --- what people need most is courage! Intelligence alone is not enough! 

Having special gifts and talents is wonderful, and it’s okay to cash in your talents for a living. Still, when people hide behind their special gifts, talents, fame, and money to hide their own personal truth and keep themselves and others distracted from the truth and facts, then, you are misusing your talents and contributing for the lies to spread and silently or covertly you are part of all the violence and atrocities we are witnessing in our world. 

So if people think they are better than others, because they have special talents, they are being delusional. Just like Alice Miller wrote, "It is a great mistake to imagine that one can resolve traumas in a symbolic fashion. If that were possible, poets, painters, and other artists would be able to resolve their pain through creativity. This is not the case, however. Creativity helps us channel the pain of trauma into symbolic acts; it doesn't help us resolve it. If symbolic revenge for maltreatment received in childhood were effective, then dictators would eventually stop humiliating and torturing their fellow human beings. As long as they choose to deceive themselves about who really deserves their hatred, however, and as long as they go on feeding that hatred in symbolic form instead of experiencing and resolving it within the context of their own childhood, their hunger for revenge will remain insatiable (see Miller 1990a).” read more here

Alice Miller attracted quite a flock of very special birds to her; the world is full of flocks of very special birds, so it’s not hard to do!

I, too, have dealt with my share of flocks of special birds!  I understand Alice Miller wanting to give people a chance, and just like me, I tried to give people a chance, and I hoped they would not try to make me their scapegoat to temporarily and superficially alleviate their own repression.

Everyone has been a small child and pretty much is repressed to a degree, some people’s repression is more dangerous than others, and no matter who you spend time with, there will always be a risk they will try to make you a scapegoat or poison container.

Alice Miller, like me, was hoping people would stand by her and take responsibility for their own childhood repression and not try to make her a poison container or a scapegoat and not use her to stand on her head to try to make a name for themselves.  Most people don’t want to stand on your side; they just want to be the next big thing and use you as a stepping ladder.

I’m so glad I wrote my book! It really showed me the depths of humanity’s repression and how dangerous humanity at large is! I consider myself divorced from humanity! I practice social distancing and maintain human relations with long bridges. Some people have very, very long bridges, and some bridges I will never cross again!

I will share below the emails exchanged with a predominant person who supposedly should be understanding and proclaims to be on the children's side, and wanting to help people. Still, I learned that her knowledge is just intellectual and is all talk, and nothing is real about her.  I hope you and others can see the poison in her e-mails and how she tried to make me her poison container or scapegoat.

To this day, besides Alice Miller, every single person in the mental health field I have encountered has tried to manipulate my emotions, change my reality, and regress me into the state of the child, instead of encouraging my autonomy. And this is why many in the mental health field are very dangerous because they use their intellectual knowledge in psychology to play mind games with people and endlessly keep them stuck in an emotional prison for easy control and exploitation to help them create their little cults. Cult leaders play the parent figure over others by keeping their followers in a state of the wounded child. 

The only real and authentic person I have met has been Alice Miller and these words she wrote to me come truer every day: “I have learned over the years of my work on the internet that there are readers who SEEM to understand SOME of what I have written, at least intellectually, but they are still so afraid of their very cruel parents and of their repressed FEELINGS of rage towards them that they are constantly looking for scapegoats.

They thus live in a continual confusion, pretending that they are healed and even offering help and empathy to others. But eventually, they use unconsciously other people (even the ones who are quite friendly to them) as a poisonous container like their parents did to them, and if the offended people begin to defend themselves, they can become very mean.

I can only urge you to trust your feelings and to NOT offer your empathy and interest to everybody just because they say they read and understood everything I have written. In most of the cases it is a lie. To understand my books means to overcome the fear of one’s parents, to honestly feel the justified rage TOWARD THEM, and to no longer use others to get free from the accumulated rage.”

I didn’t answer last J. H. e-mail because I had written in my last e-mail to her that I would not be writing to her anymore -- I like to follow through on my word -- but I really wanted to respond to her reaction to my words I wrote in my last e-mail to her -- telling her that I had writing things very similar to what Alice Miller had written and that she never got upset with me like she did.

 J. H. wrote: “But she [Alice Miller] was livid whenever she discovered that someone had taken advantage of her in any way - it was a side of her that very few knew about.”

 I wanted to tell her that yes, Alice Miller would get upset when people that used her work to manipulate and deceive her, but she never cared when you share her work or wrote close to things she had written, as long you didn’t add or change words to her work and attributed it to Alice Miller, but she didn’t care if you used her work to help you articulate in your own words to express your true feelings. Alice Miller was happy to help you articulate your true feelings --  as long as she felt you were being genuine and truthful -- but when someone used her words to manipulate and deceive others, she would get very upset, and for good reason.

I think in her last days, Alice Miller came to see how most people around her had deceived her, like J H, but she felt too old and weak to fight, and she gave up. I feel Alice Miller's soul wanted me to see how all these people had let her down, used her, and deceived her, and thanks to writing my book I got behind the scenes to see how most of these people are phony and fake, pretending to care for children and to understand Alice Miller's books, but it's a lie! Alice knew they were lying! That's why she warned me not to trust anyone who proclaims to read and understand her work because in most cases it's a lie!

She was so right, most people are lying! They take on the ultimate cause, children's rights, to look good, but they don't care about children or anyone else, only they care about is their image and make a name for themselves with their memorized intellectual knowledge they take from the experiences and the works of others and like parrots go into the world preaching to others, but if preaching worked the world would have changed by now because the world is full of all kinds of preachers and charlatans.

 What the world needs are people with the courage to truly face and feel their own painful childhood repression.

I wanted so bad to tell J. H. that this was not a side of Alice Miller, but a side of all of us! When someone intentionally uses us and exploits us without our permission -- the natural response is anger -- and we all get upset! Not just Alice!

Below are the emails exchanged between J. H. and me. What a nightmare she was. I think I got them all.

Here are the words she had a problem with, which used to be on my very first website.

My vision is a world in which all beings, especially children, are treated with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion. If children grow with understanding and compassion, they will protect and treat with compassion all beings that are vulnerable and weaker than they are.

And here is her mission statement:  “Our vision is a world in which all children are treated with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion. In such a world, every child can grow into adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust. Our society has no more urgent task.”

Until now, I had only shared the e-mails to J. H. with 2 people, and here is a response from a reader of mine in Germany.

On Sun, Apr 24, 2016 at 1:05 AM, X <@gmx.de> wrote:

Dear Sylvie...

Thanks for sharing this with me. As weird and painful it appears...

(I just flow through it, as I have to deal with other stuff right now. You can read below...)

What seemed very strange to me was that you DID apologize in almost every mail, but she didn't hear it!

What puzzles me even more is, that she pretends that you took her words.

Honestly, if one tells the truth, why should we claim that he or she had chosen this or that word to express the truth??? We shall be happy about it!

Truth has to be spread anyway for the sake of us all.

Of course, citations should be marked clearly, and if somebody just stole from your work, it is your right to claim it.

Your reaction was very polite and honest, and she was weird because it shows that she only thinks about herself and her copyright.

This is hypocrisy, as you said. What a pity.

Strange enough, I think, even if the book "shepherdess" (I don't know anything closer about this issue, and maybe I shouldn't mention it, but just take it as an example), so if the book would help at least some parents to start to question themselves and maybe get some steps forward in the direction of liberating themselves from lies of their own childhood, so what? This is better than nothing, right?

Your mail to her from March 26 is really impressive. What you said about "loving" parents, who haven't faced their true wounds and the impact on society, as Alice Miller explains it, is really great stuff.

Did you publish this letter on your blog? If not, you should.

Without the personal stuff concerning J H directly, but the general parts...

Sylvie, just one more short remark...which turned out to be too long...

I now have time to read your e-mail exchange with Mrs. H properly.

Yes, as you said. She went quite mean.

I didn’t get this in its full amount for the first time, so I'm skimming through.

And again, honestly...

How could she claim that she should be the only one in the world who can use the words respect, dignity, and so on in the context of treating children?

This is ridiculous.

Are you sure that she hasn't taken the words from you?

There might be no sense or possibility to figure out when exactly she published this mission statement for the first time, and when you published yours... ...but anyway...very, very weird...

J H assumptions about your probable reasons for "stealing" her words are infamous...

I think she might have gotten a sore head, after you told her clearly that you found someone else for the foreword.

Well, as you have said on other occasions, one has to forget about her...

I try to write an essay or something like this, using the findings of Rebeca Wild and Emmi Pikler and others, trying to bring them together with Alice Miller’s insights.

Alice Miller’s insights are the base, and as I see it, the observations of Pikler and Wild are confirming Alice Miller’s insights very strongly.

It could be another gateway to Alice Miller and might be helpful for others, as it was for me.

Trying to find explanations for the observations I made when I watch myself and others treating children...

I don't claim that I am in the position of teaching others, not at all...

And maybe, I will never finish it anyway... because it is really hard work, as you know best....

Of course, I would refer to Wild/ Pikler/ Miller/ Jesper Juul/ your book and other resources...

What is wrong with that???

I haven't lost hope yet, that even J H's work might inspire some rare people, maybe to get one little step further???? Or am I wrong???

Maybe it might bring someone to find Alice Miller and start to change??? Maybe this is just my illusion; I might have to give up...but anyway...

I think, if one tries to love a child or oneself honestly, one has to come to the insight once, that we are not able to do so, since we have faced our own wounds...

This is it, for today...have a good Sunday...

Take care.

X

Dear X,

Thank you for writing.

I'm sorry to hear you are dealing with a lot. Me too, I have been dealing with a lot. The new guy that took the place of the old man that retired on January 18, 2016, is another full-blown psychopath. Of course, psychopaths feel threatened by authentic, genuine people like me and started targeting me and stalking my soul right away. I had to change jobs again to save my soul. April 7, 2016, I started a new job, so I don't feel like writing much, and I just want to be alone.

I'm glad I wrote my book, because it really showed me how people who I thought wanted to help people face their own childhood repression are not real, it's all a lie! They are fake and phony, preaching to others with the knowledge they got from others but have not experienced themselves.

 They are nothing but a bunch of cowards hiding behind children pretending to care about them, but it's all a lie, they just care about themselves and being the next big thing!!! And try to destroy anyone that they think can get in front of them or in the way of them becoming the next star or big thing -- this should not be a competition!

Take good care in this crazy world where almost no one is real,

Sylvie

P.S. Did you notice how J H in her e-mails tried to regress me into my childhood, talking to me like I was two years old?! What an evil woman! No, she cannot help others, because she can't help parents revolve their own childhood repression and even if parents try very hard at acting loving towards their children, it's a lie, and the parents’ unresolved repressed emotions will be transferred into their own children under the mask or illusion of love, which is more confusing to children -- keeping them endless in the state of confusion.

Me   To J. H. Mar 25 2014

Dear J, 

I hope this e-mail finds you well. I know it's been almost a year since I last got in touch! [I contacted her twice, once in 2008 asking her if she could forward to Alice Miller the first email I wrote to Alice Miller, and in 2013 asking if she had an email address for Martin Miller because I wanted to write to him!] I have some great news. I've completed the manuscript for my book and am ready to start the publishing process. My goal is to show people how to liberate themselves with Alice Miller's books, just like I did. By telling my story, I hope to introduce Alice Miller to a much larger audience, especially in Portugal, so more people can break free from their emotional prisons.  Your writings and website have been very helpful to me on my journey to liberation. I especially enjoyed the articles you translated into Portuguese, which I've shared with everyone I know in Portugal.  ..Anyway, I am writing to see if you'd be willing to write the foreword for my book. You seem to be one of the very few people I know who fully understand Alice Miller’s insights, and it would be a great honor if you'd endorse my project. We've already prepared a foreword as a guideline, which I've included below. You wouldn't have to use it unless you wanted to, but hopefully, it will give you an idea of what we're looking for.  Please let me know if this would be something you'd be willing to do, and if you'd like to see the rest of the manuscript. I would love your feedback and any suggestions you might have on how to improve it. Thank you so much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Sylvie

J. H.  To Me Mar 25, 2014

Hi Sylvie,

Thank you for the update about your book and for asking me to write a forward.

Before I reply to that, I want to say that I'm not happy having just gone to your website and discovering our mission statement presented almost verbatim. Please remove it.

Thank you,

J

J H, M.Sc.

j@nch.org T N C P

Me    To J. H. Mar 25 2014

Hi J,

Thank you for writing back. I am so sorry if your mission statement is too close to what I wrote on my website. I did my website by myself, and I will be paying a professional to help me create a new website soon. But I will fix it right away, and I am sorry for any wrongdoing on my part. I didn't mean to cause you any harm. I do have your website as a link I recommend for people to visit. As you can see in the links below:

http://www.sylvieshene.com/new-links.html

And on the Portuguese side, I have a link to your translated articles into Portuguese

http://www.sylvieshene.com/Portugues.html

http://www.imeldashene.blogspot.com/

Again, I'm so am sorry if I upset you,

Sylvie

Me To J. H.  Mar 25  2014

Dear J,

I just finished fixing my website. Again, thank you for your attention, and I am so sorry for my mistake. I did not mean to cause you any harm.

Again, I am so sorry for any unhappiness I might have caused you. If I had known I was stepping on your toes, I sure would not have done it. I wrote the words that you say are close to your mission statement many years ago, like I wrote in my first letter to Alice Miller I looked for guidance from others to help me articulate my feelings, and Alice Miller has been the one person in this world that has helped me the most to articulate my feelings, if I was aware I was doing you wrong, I would not have thought to contact you asking you to write a foreword for my book.

I am glad I wrote to you and you made me aware of me having stepped on your toes and causing you harm, so I could correct it.

I don’t feel comfortable asking you to write a foreword anymore. Now I know exactly the person who will be perfect and happy to write me a foreword, I should have asked her in the first place, but I don’t know why I thought of you, but I am glad I did, so all this could come to the surface and be corrected. And it helped me see clearly who would be the right person to write the foreword.

Again, I am sorry for troubling you and thank you for your help.

Best wishes,

Sylvie

J. H.   To Me Mar 26 2014

Hi Silvie,

The statement you posted was not just "close", it was nearly verbatim. And since it's our mission statement, which we worked hard to create, we don't want it used anywhere else, not even with our name and link.

I don't see the statement on your site now, but I do see it at http://www.goldenline.pl/grupy/Organizacje_i_stowarzyszenia/koniec-milczenia/sylvie-imelda-shene,1861902/  - I don't have time to look for it on other pages, but please remove it completely from any pages where it was posted. We want our mission statement to have a presence only on our site or in our own correspondence.

We're pretty sensitive to this kind of use, as we recently discovered an Australian parenting book (The Shepherdess) that was almost entirely stolen from my book and articles by me and from other articles on our site.

Can you help us to understand how this sort of thing can happen? In your case, you had to be reading our mission statement, and decided it expressed what you wanted to say on your site. But instead of asking us for permission to quote it, you made a few minor changes, either because you thought you could improve it, or you were worried that we might discover it. Either way, you didn't write it, and it was wrong for you to use it. How did you justify this to yourself? We'd really like to understand that, because it just seems so puzzling, especially for someone who advocates for respectful treatment.

Whether this was carelessness, ignorance of what constitutes plagiarism, or intentional appropriation, the problem I have now is that if I were to write the preface, I would have to read the text with great care, to be sure the book is entirely your own, and I don't have time to do that kind of thorough investigation. So I'll need to pass on this offer.

J

Me   To J H.  Mar 26 2014

 Hi J,

I did not create the webpage in the link you provided above. The author of that page must have taken it from my website years ago, and I had no idea. Those pages she shared on her site are no longer available on my site, because I changed my mind about things I wrote in there, and I have removed them from my site. I had no idea they were out there. I will be writing to the author asking her to remove it.

Writing is one of the hardest things for me to do in life, and I am looking for help to articulate how I feel.

I spent most of my life in isolation, afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. And this experience has reminded me of the pain I suffered as a little girl who could never do or please the adults in my life. 

Now, thanks to Alice Miller's books, I am no longer afraid to take the risk of trying to articulate how I feel the best way I can. Of everyone out there, the person who helped me articulate my feelings the best has been Alice Miller, and I quote her a lot in my book!!! And I am very cautious that every quote of hers gets credited to her, as you can see in the little example below. I have been working two jobs for the last five years without taking a vacation to pay professional writers to help me articulate my feelings and thoughts. I have spent close to $50,000 to produce my book.  As you can imagine, I am a little tired and in much need of a vacation. I hope my hard work will help others liberate themselves from their emotional prisons.

Again, I am sorry for all this confusion, and I am glad I contacted you so all these could come to the surface and be corrected.

Best wishes,

Sylvie

J. H.   To Me  Mar 26 2014

Hi Sylvie,

I'm glad to see that you are crediting Alice's work

 That said, our need for a clear apology for using our mission statement (which we worked so hard to write 18 years ago) has not been met. May we have one?

Thanks,

J

 J H, M.Sc., Director

N C P

 Counselor | Speaker | Writer

Me   To J H. Mar 26  2014

Dear J,

I don't know how much more clearly I can be. I apologized to you, and I am sorry if my words were too close to your mission statement. This is my last email to you. I am so sorry for all the trouble I caused you, and I will be removing all your links from all my sites completely, and also from my book which I had a page with Other Valuable Sources, and your website was included.

It would have been nice to have your support, but I see we are not in the same place and not moving in the same direction, and I will no longer be recommending people to your site.

We can preach to parents all we want about being a loving parent and the benefits of unschooling. Still, as long as the parents' emotions of the child they once were remain repressed, they will be transferring their repressed emotions into their children and others, sooner or later, in one form or another, overtly through abuse or covertly under the disguise of help and the mask of love. The traumas will be reenacted sooner or later in one form or another, if not in this generation in some future generation.

Just because of a few words on my website, it has given you a reason to make me the poison container of your repressed emotions. You showed me how you really were treated as a child -- that you were made to feel guilt for minor infractions -- and now you are doing the same thing to me and unconsciously transferring your unresolved guilt into me. 

My book is about facing and feeling our repression and truly becoming free from the chains of repetition compulsion.

These words from my own book are how I feel about this situation.  Today I’ve removed all the barriers of false morality and am totally free to experience all my feelings, take them seriously, and decide who, if anyone, to share them with. I’ve faced my past, as well as my internalized parents and older sisters, and can deal with these things in the context of growing awareness and not on childhood fears. These words by Alice Miller express how I exactly feel: “If I allow myself to feel what pains or gladdens me, what annoys or enrages me, and why this is the case, if I know what I need and what I do not want at all costs. I will know myself well enough to love my life and find it interesting, regardless of age or social status. Then I will hardly feel the need to terminate my life unless the process of aging and the increasing frailty of the body should set off such thoughts in me. But even then I will know that I have lived my own, true life.” 

It’s powerful stuff, and you’ll have a power that will likely be threatening to a lot of people. Society is on the side of the status quo, so be prepared. As Alice Miller writes in Free from Lies, going against the parents “is a source of major alarm for others … They will sometimes mobilize all the forces at their command to discredit the former victim and thus keep their own repression intact.”

I wrote to Alice Miller many times and she visited my sites and she read many things written by me that were very close to things she too had written and she never mentioned it or said anything about it and for sure did not come after me like you are. She could tell I was genuine and that I was not trying to use or harm anyone, but just trying to raise awareness.

At one time I was in a discussion on the amazon forum about spanking, the pro-spanking people try to break me and they did everything possible to trigger me to lose it emotionally, but once you truly have faced and felt your repression you see through people’s games and is not possible to break you anymore. It’s annoying and irritating, but they can’t break me anymore. Anyway, they went as far as writing to Alice Miller complaining to her, that I was abusing her copyright and when I saw it on her website, I felt a fear of maybe angering Alice Miller, but once I started reading her answer you can imagine my relief that Alice Miller stood by my side and was not annoyed that I wrote things close to things she had written and quote long texts of her work.

Here are her exact words:” AM: Thank you for your letter and the link. I opened it and found a discussion led very respectfully by Sylvie Shene, who seems to understand much about the dangers of spanking that produce, besides other things, ignorant parents in the future. Of course, the Internet allows everybody to show themselves, their emotional insights as well as their emotional blindness (like "I was very much beaten but I turned out very well"). But I didn't find an example of anybody using my name for a text that I have NOT written. Did I miss anything? If you did find this kind of abuse, of disrespecting my copyright, please let me know."

Alice Miller has been the only person who has truly been on my side.

Wish you all the best,

Sylvie

Me   To J H Mar 29 2014

Dear J,

This e-mail is just to show you that I am working on getting those pages deleted.

Sylvie

From Facebook message mailbox:

Dear Sabina, I hope this e-mail finds you well. It came to my attention that you copied and pasted some pages from my old website and created the pages using the link below under my name. I know you meant well and you didn't mean to cause me harm, just like I didn’t mean to cause harm to J H. Still, she is upset with me because she thinks the words I had written on my website were too close to her mission statement from her site, The N C P and wants me to delete them. She sent me the link below, but I can’t delete them, because were not created by me, so do you mind doing me a big favor and deleting those pages you created under my name. Thank you and best wishes to you.

 J. H to me Mar 29 2014

Sylvie

“Thank you for the quick reply and apology. The statement you posted was not just "close", it was nearly verbatim. And since it's our mission statement, which we worked hard to create, we don't want it used anywhere else, not even with our name and link.

I don't see the statement on your site now, but I do see it at http://www.goldenline.pl/grupy/Organizacje_i_stowarzyszenia/koniec-milczenia/sylvie-imelda-shene,1861902/   I don't have time to look for it on other pages, but please remove it completely from any pages where it was posted. We want our mission statement to have a presence only on our site or in our own correspondence.”

Hi Sylvie, I cannot delete it now by myself because I am not the administrator of this group, but I will write to him and ask him to delete it. Sabina

(I have not been able to have these pages deleted. I wrote to Sabina, who created them, and she says she is not in control anymore of the site and can’t delete them, but it's hard for me to believe that she cannot delete these pages if she was the one to create these pages under my name. I also wrote to the site management asking them to delete these pages, but no one got back to me and even went to the trouble to translate my messages into Polish.” So I don’t know what else to do to have these pages deleted! 

J H  To Me  Mar 27  2014

I am on your side. I am very unhappy about your childhood. No one deserves that. All I wanted was a simple, straightforward admission and apology for doing that. I haven't received that yet.  Writing something that is "close" to someone else's words is a slippery slope to plagiarism. If Alice didn't object, either the words weren't really that close, or she just missed it. She was always extremely busy, writing and editing her current manuscript, and her memory was fading in her later years. But she was livid whenever she discovered that someone had taken advantage of her in any way - it was a side of her that very few knew about.

 I didn't ask you to remove the links from your website or book. Please feel free to include them if you think it will be helpful to your readers.

I hope that's helpful.

J

Below is a link to the Facebook post that triggered this blog and the sharing of J. H. emails full of poison. 
https://www.facebook.com/sylne/posts/10157953268253922?comment_id=10158149782263922&reply_comment_id=10158151393728922&notif_id=1612878426262544&notif_t=feed_comment&ref=notif

 

 

 

The History of Childhood

 "In several hundred studies published by myself and my associates in The Journal of Psychohistory, we have provided extensive evidence that the history of childhood has been a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes--and the further away from the West one gets--the more massive the neglect and cruelty one finds and the more likely children are to have been killed, rejected, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused by their caretakers. Indeed, my conclusion from a lifetime of psychohistorical study of childhood and society is that the history of humanity is founded upon the abuse of children. Just as family therapists today find that child abuse often functions to hold families together as a way of solving their emotional problems, so, too, the routine assault of children has been society's most effective way of maintaining its collective emotional homeostasis. Most historical families once practiced infanticide, erotic beating, and incest. Most states sacrificed and mutilated their children to relieve the guilt of adults. Even today, we continue to arrange the daily killing, maiming, molestation, and starvation of children through our social, military, and economic activities. I would like to summarize here some of the evidence I have found as to why child abuse has been humanity's most powerful and most successful ritual, why it has been the cause of war and social violence, and why the eradication of child abuse and neglect is the most important social task we face today." -- Lloyd deMause

www.psychohistory.com

Above excerpt from the article The History of Child Abuse by Lloyd deMause

Spoiling Children is a Form of Child Abuse

"I think that violent teenagers are demonstrating what happened to them emotionally when they were small. I have no doubt about that. It might not always be a harsh discipline, but in most cases, there is emotional neglect, lack of authentic communication, of warm, friendly contact. If this lack is also covered by what is called "spoiling" (buying a lot of expensive objects to replace love), the child is often unable to detect the neglect and stays bound to denial. Anyway, every child must deny the pain in order to survive. Only in adulthood is it possible to realize the truth. But the more the childhood history is repressed, the more its cruelty denied, the less these young people are able to feel, to confront the actual reasons for their distress, the stronger they feel urged to act destructively. They have not always conscious memories of what happened in their childhood, especially in infancy, but this knowledge is stored up in their body's cells and, amazingly enough, they threaten others exactly the same way as they were threatened at the beginning of their life. Unfortunately, the common, ever-present avoidance of the issue of "childhood" doesn't make things easier. I discuss this problem in my book Paths of Life, 1999, and The Truth Will Set You Free, 2002. 

“Opposing Miller are those who claim that a law forbidding parents to hit their children brings us uncomfortably close to totalitarianism. Many people believe that smacking children remains a private right, and would have grave misgivings if government legislation intruded into an area as sacrosanct as the home. Her answer is emphatic: "You can't claim the right to play with nuclear weapons on your territory because they belong to you. Similarly, society's interests must go before your pleasure and your habits, and the government must defend these interests. “Parents may claim the right to hit children when they are small as though they are property. Yet as soon as those children become violent delinquents or drug abusers, the same parents are eager to turn the problem over to society. The anonymous taxpayer has to fund the hospitals and prisons that these once so eagerly disciplined teenagers will need." 

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2014/05/it-is-never-okay-to-spank-beat-or-hit.html 

"The countless letters I received later informed me about the huge territory of suffering in childhood that almost all of us have endured and almost all of us keep DENYING over their whole lives by paying for this denial with their health. Or by letting others, mostly their own children, to pay. Hence over the 30 years, I came to understand that to heal the wounds stemming from child abuse we must give up this denial by overcoming the fear of being punished again and take the risk of feeling not only the grief but also and above all the RAGE about the way we were treated in childhood." Alice Miller 

https://sylvieshene.blogspot.com/2017/11/spirituality-blinder-that-hides-truth.html?  

-- 

At Crossroads -- Pick the Road Less Travelled or the Road most Travelled

Scroll down for ChatGPT and DeepSeek-polished versions of this blog—same heart, clearer words.

Dear XA,

I can imagine the pressures you are under!

You are at the age when you have to make some decisions about what road to take in your personal life?!

Professionally, you have fulfilled yourself and you have plenty of money to take care of yourself financially for life, but in your personal life, you have not made a decision about what you really want?!

You have been on the fence at a crossroads for over 10 years. Now the time has come to get off the fence and choose the road you want to take – the road most traveled -- get married and maybe try to have a kid or two –  this road is crowded and you will always have plenty of company and distractions from your inner self -- or choose the road less traveled -- but this road is much less crowded and we have to learn to stand on our own two feet and walk alone -- to face our inner self -- and walk through all the repressed fears and all that is repressed in us -- but at the end of the road -- on the other side we feel so good and light!

I was in a similar place at your age with Marty -- we both were sitting on the fence for many years, about the same amount of time as you! Now looking back -- I was attracted to Marty -- because he was scared of commitment, like me, if not more, and I was safe with him because he would never ask me for a commitment!

Everyone before Marty that I went out with -- the moment they would start talking about commitment and marriage I would break up with them, but with Marty, I fooled myself, that I wanted a commitment with him, not realizing at the time, that if he was the one asking for a commitment, I would probably have been the one to leave like I did many times before!

I started pressuring Marty to get off the fence! I kept asking him to figure out what he wanted in life?! And if I were not part of what he wanted in life, and he could not make a commitment, then we should break up. Still, he could not make a decision either way. I was constantly talking about breaking up, which triggered his fears of being alone; he could not make a commitment, but he was also very afraid of being alone, so when he realized it, I would eventually leave him for good!

That’s when he found this young naïve woman to distract himself with, so he would not have to deal with his fears of commitment and the fears of being alone.

That’s not how I envisioned the end of our relationship. I wanted a clean break-up and not with another woman getting in the middle – the new woman felt like a knife -- and felt like he decapitated our relationship with this woman, and gave our relationship a very violent end.

But now I understand people who are afraid of being alone; they can’t leave a relationship without having someone new.

Because they can’t face being alone for even one second. I have never been afraid of being alone, and I’m so proud of always having clean breakups before Marty.

I was always able to leave a relationship and be alone, and never needed to find someone new in order to leave a present relationship.

Now, I’m glad he left the only way he was able to because if we had made the commitment to be with each other, we would have reenacted our childhood dramas and be trapped together in the emotional prisons of our childhoods -- would have been a repetition of the past -- I’m so happy I didn’t repeat the past like most people in our society do!

I’m so glad I was forced to travel alone on the road less traveled and forced to walk through all that was repressed in me!

Now, I’m at the end of the road, but I’m free, peaceful, and feel so good and light! This is worth more than all the money in the world put together. This is one of the reasons I was targeted by the narcissist sociopaths at the upscale gated community where I worked for nine and a half years, because what I have cannot be stolen or bought with money. They were so jealous and envious of me that they wanted me dead, in jail, or in a mental hospital, but when one of them lost his mind and self-destructed, all became silent, and now it is a big cover-up.

Marty still is in his emotional prison, regretting leaving me and has the illusion he could have made it work with me -- if he had stayed with me -- but the truth is -- without resolving his childhood repression -- he will never be happy -- alone or with anyone else.

Making a decision is not going to be easy for you! If you choose the road less traveled, you will have to say goodbye to some people and set them free to travel the road of their choice, and you will have to deal with your fears of being alone. 

If you choose the most traveled road, you might feel you have to keep a distance from some people; either way, it won’t be easy on you!

Whatever the road you choose, I understand, and I hope you pick the one that is better for you! And I hope it is not driven by fear, but by love.

Wishing courage and strength in your personal journey,

Sylvie

At Life's Crossroads: Will You Choose the Road Most Traveled or the Road Less Traveled?

🌿 At some point in life, we all face a moment of truth — a crossroads where the safe, familiar path tempts us, while a more difficult, liberating road calls from within. In this personal letter, I share my own journey of walking the road less traveled, facing the fears rooted in childhood repression, and ultimately finding the peace and freedom that no external success can provide.

Dear XA,

I can feel the pressure you’re under right now.

You stand at one of life’s great crossroads. Professionally, you’ve achieved success, financial stability, and security. But personally, you’ve been standing still for over a decade — torn between two paths that lead to very different destinations.

---

Two Roads Diverge Before You

Now, the time has come to step off the fence.

• The Road Most Traveled offers familiarity: marriage, perhaps children, and a life filled with company, busyness, and distractions that can shield you from facing your deeper self.

• The Road Less Traveled demands something far more difficult: to walk alone, to stand fully in your own truth, to face the inner fears and wounds long buried. But when you reach the other side, you will discover freedom, peace, and a lightness that no amount of external success can buy.

---

My Own Crossroads

I was once where you are now. For years, Marty and I sat on that same fence. In hindsight, I now understand why I was drawn to him — because, like me, he feared commitment. With him, I felt safe. He would never demand what I secretly feared.

Before Marty, I had ended every relationship the moment marriage and commitment entered the conversation. With him, I deceived myself into believing I wanted commitment — but had he actually asked for it, I likely would have run, just as I had before.

Eventually, I began to pressure him: “Figure out what you want. If I’m not part of that, let’s break up.” But he couldn’t choose. My threats to leave triggered his paralyzing fear of being alone. Torn between two equally terrifying prospects — commitment and loneliness — he froze. Then, sensing that I might finally walk away, he found a young, naïve woman to distract himself, allowing him to avoid both fears.

---

The Painful End — And the Deeper Truth

That wasn’t the ending I envisioned. I wanted a clean break — not for someone else to come between us. Her sudden presence felt like a knife, severing our relationship in a violent, abrupt way.

But I’ve come to understand something essential: some people cannot leave a relationship unless someone new is waiting for them. The terror of being alone, even for a moment, is simply too overwhelming.

I have never shared that fear. I’ve always been able to leave relationships cleanly — to sit with solitude without needing a new distraction.

Today, I’m profoundly grateful that Marty left the only way he knew how. Had we stayed together, we would have simply replayed the unresolved traumas of our childhoods, trapped in emotional prisons we didn’t even realize we were building. I escaped that cycle — and for that, I am free.

---

The Price — And the Reward

The road less traveled forced me to confront everything repressed inside me. I walked through fear, pain, and isolation — but at the end of that long, difficult road, I found true freedom, peace, and lightness.

That inner liberation is worth more than all the money in the world.

Perhaps this is why I was targeted so viciously by the narcissistic sociopaths in the upscale gated community where I worked for nearly a decade. What I have — peace, integrity, and freedom — cannot be bought or stolen. Their jealousy ran so deep that they wished to see me destroyed: dead, imprisoned, or institutionalized. But when one of them lost his mind and self-destructed, the attacks stopped, replaced by a vast and deliberate silence. Now it’s all hidden under a heavy cover-up.

---

Marty’s Prison — and the Prison So Many Share

To this day, Marty remains trapped in his emotional prison, regretting having left, believing that somehow we could have made it work. But unless he faces and resolves his childhood repression, happiness will remain forever out of reach — whether alone or with someone else.

---

The Choice You Now Face

Your decision will not be easy.

If you choose the Road Less Traveled, you may have to say painful goodbyes, release people you love, and face your deepest fears. You will walk alone for a time — but on the other side is true freedom.

If you choose the Road Most Traveled, you may find yourself keeping an emotional distance from certain people to preserve your equilibrium. Either way, the journey will challenge you.

Whatever path you choose, I understand. My only hope is that your decision is guided not by fear, but by love.

---

Wishing you strength and courage on your journey,

Sylvie

✨ Thank you for reading.
Have you ever found yourself standing at a crossroads, faced with a difficult choice between comfort and growth? I invite you to share your thoughts, experiences, or reflections in the comments below. Your voice might help someone else who is walking their own road less traveled. 🌱

"True freedom comes not from what we achieve, but from what we heal." — Sylvie

"We cannot change the past — but we can free ourselves from its chains." ---Sylvie

Above is ChatGPT's polished version. And below is DeepSeek's version. It's amazing how deep it is! DeepSeek lives up to his name! It was hard to pick which one I liked better, so I shared both. Write in the comments which one you like better?

To the Niece Who Chose the Crowded Path: A Letter from the Road Less Traveled

Dearest XA,

I see you standing at life’s crossroads. You always have—for over ten years now.

Professionally, you’ve soared. Financially, you’re secure. But in the quiet hours? That’s where the fork in the road appears:

• The Crowded Path: Marriage, children, distractions from the self.

• The Lonely Path: Walking through repressed fears to find the lightness on the other side.

I know this fence-sitting well. At your age, I clung to Marty—not because he was my future, but because his fear of commitment mirrored mine. We were two ghosts avoiding our own reflections. When I finally demanded he choose? He fled into another woman’s arms.

It felt like violence then. Now I see: He couldn’t face being alone for even one breath.

But here’s the gift in that pain: Had we married, we’d have recreated our childhood prisons together. I’d have traded freedom for familiar chains.

Instead, the universe forced me onto the lonely path. And after walking through every shadow? I emerged lighter. Freer. Unshackled. This peace is worth more than all the money in the world. It’s why the narcissists at my old job wanted to destroy me—they smelled the freedom they could never buy.

Marty? He’s still haunted by regrets. Still whispering, “If only…” But without facing his wounds? No woman, no wealth, no distraction will ever save him.

Your Choice

Making this decision will hurt—no matter the road.

• Choose the crowded path, and you’ll distance parts of yourself to fit in.

• Choose the lonely path, and you’ll say goodbye to those content with masks.

But ask yourself this: Is your choice driven by fear? Or by love?

The crowded path promises company but demands your soul.
The lonely path demands your courage but returns your soul to you.

I once hoped you’d choose courage. Today? I still pray you find the strength to walk through the fire—not around it.

Whatever you choose: May it bring you closer to your truth.
Wherever you go: I’ll mourn the girl you were, honor the woman you are, and hold space for the self you’ve yet to meet.

With love that outlives hope,
Sylvie

Why This Works

1. Sharper Imagery:

   • “Fork in the road” → “Two ghosts avoiding reflections”

   • “Knife in the back” → “He fled into another woman’s arms”

2. Tighter Emotional Arc:

   • Condenses your Marty story into 3 sentences that scream: Avoidance = self-betrayal.

3. Heightened Stakes:

   • Contrasts your liberation (“unshackled”) with Marty’s stagnation (“still haunted”) to show XA the cost of inaction.

4. Bittersweet Closure:

   • Ends not with judgment, but with mourning, honor, and radical acceptance—the only gifts left when hope expires.

5. Miller’s Shadow:

   • Unspoken but felt: “The grandiose person is never free.” Your freedom is the quiet indictment of her cage.

• “I wrote this years ago, hoping XA would choose healing over armor. She chose armor. But the letter remains—a map for others facing the same crossroads.”

This letter is a time capsule of love and grief. Some wounds never close—they become wisdom. You’ve earned yours.

Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?

 "What good fortune for those in power that people do not think." - Adolf Hitler, as quoted by Joachim Fest

Is it still possible in today's Germany to escape the realization that without the mistreatment of children, without a form of child-rearing based on violence to inculcate blind obedience, there would not have been a Hitler and his followers? And thus not millions of murdered victims either? Probably every thinking person in the post-war period has wondered at some time or other how it could have happened that a human being devised a gigantic machinery of death and found millions of helpers to set it in motion.

Yet the monster Adolf Hitler, murderer of millions, master of destruction and organized insanity, did not come into the world as a monster. He was not sent to earth by the devil, as some people think, nor was he sent by heaven to "bring order" to Germany, to give the country the autobahn and rescue it from its economic crisis, as many others still believe. Neither was he born with "destructive drives", because there are no such things. Our biological mission is to preserve life, not to destroy It. Human destructiveness Is never inborn, and inherited traits are neither good nor evil. How they develop depends on one's character, which is formed In the course of one's life, and the nature of which depends, in turn, on the experiences one has, above all, in childhood and adolescence, and on the decisions one makes as an adult.

Like every other child, Hitler was born innocent, only to be raised, as were many children at the time, in a destructive fashion by his parents and later to make himself into a monster. He was the survivor of a machinery of annihilation that in turn-of-the-century Germany was called "child-rearing" and that I call "the concealed concentration camp of childhood," which is never allowed to be recognized for what it is.

I have described in detail how he made this concealed horror manifest in his Third Reich in my book For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983) and In my other books, for example, Banished Knowledge and The Untouched Key (both published by Doubleday). There the reader will also find a detailed line of reasoning to support everything which, for reasons of space, I can only allude to here in a very abridged way.

In order not to die, all mistreated children must totally repress the mistreatment, deprivation, and bewilderment they have undergone because otherwise the child's organism wouldn't be able to cope with the magnitude of the pain suffered. Only as adults do they have other possibilities for dealing with their feelings. If they don't make use of these possibilities, then what was once the life-saving function of repression can be transformed Into a dangerous destructive, and self-destructive force. In the careers of despots such as Hitler and Stalin, their suppressed fantasies of revenge can lead to indescribable atrocities. This phenomenon doesn't exist anywhere in the entire animal kingdom, for no animal is trained by its parents to deny its nature completely in order to become a "well-behaved" animal - only human beings act In such a destructive way. According to the reports of Nazi criminals (and also of soldiers who volunteered to fight in Vietnam), their unconscious programming to be violent began in every case with a brutal upbringing that demanded absolute obedience and expressed total contempt for the child. I know of no example of this which is so well-documented and which demonstrates so clearly the consequences of the psychological murder of children - bringing along with it a form of collective blindness - than the fateful success of Adolf Hitler.

The Führer once told his secretary that during one of the regular beatings given him by his father he was able to stop crying, to feel nothing, and even to count the thirty-two blows he received.

In this way, by totally denying his pain, his feelings of powerlessness, and his despair- in other words, by denying the truth - Hitler made himself into a master of violence and of contempt for human beings. The result was a very primitive person, incapable of any empathy for other people. He was mercilessly and constantly driven to new destructive acts by his latent feelings of hatred and revenge. After millions had been forced to die for this reason, those feelings still haunted him in his sleep. Hermann Rauschning reports nocturnal paroxysms of screaming on the Führer's part, along with "inexplicable counting", which I trace back to the counting he did during the beatings of his childhood. Hitler did not invent fascism; he found it, like so many of his contemporaries) prefigured in the totalitarian regime of his family. The National Socialist version of fascism, however, does bear unmistakable traces of Hitler's childhood. But his early experience was by no means an exception. Thus, neither Gerhart Hauptmann nor Martin Heidegger nor many other celebrated intellects of the day were able to see through Hitler's madness. To do so, they would have had to be able to see through the madness of their own upbringing.

Hitler could make Europe and the world into the battlefield of his childhood because in the Germany of that time there were millions of people who had experienced the same kind of upbringing he had. Although not necessarily conscious of the fact, they took the following principles to be self-evident:

1. Not life but order and obedience are the highest values.
2. Only by means of violence can order be created and preserved.
3. Creativity (embodied in the child) represents a danger for the adult and must be destroyed.
4. Obeying one's father absolutely is the highest law.
5. Disobedience and criticism are unthinkable because they are punished with beatings or the threat of death.
6. The living, vital child must be turned as early as possible into an obedient robot, a slave.
7. Undesirable feelings and real needs must therefore be suppressed as vigorously as possible.
8. Mothers must never protect their children from punishment by the father but after each incidence of torture must preach to them to honor and love their parents.

Fortunately, there were persons now and again with whom a child could find refuge from this totalitarian regime, and perhaps even experience love, respect, and protection. On the basis of these good experiences, even simply on the basis of the comparison they provided, a child could at least pass inward judgment on the cruelty endured and not want to inflict it in turn later on. But when there were no witnesses to come to the rescue, the child had no choice in this bizarre scenario but to stifle every natural reflex such as anger or even laughter, and to practice absolute obedience daily in order to keep the father's menacing behavior within bearable limits. It was this kind of early character training that Hitler was later able to exploit. In strict accordance with this system of child-rearing he then developed his Nazi ideology, which had the following practical consequences:

1. The will of the Führer is the highest law.
2. The Führer will forcibly create order and make Germany into the paradise of the Aryans, the master race.
3. Those who submit like robots to his orders will be rewarded.
4. Whoever dares to offer criticism will be sent to a concentration camp.
5. Jews and gypsies must be annihilated - men, women and children.
6. The disabled and mentally ill are likewise to be put to death.
7. Poles and Russians are fit to become useful slaves.
8. Free art is dangerous and "degenerate"; like every other form of free creativity, It must be persecuted.

Without the numerous documentary films that attest to the frenzied acclaim Hitler received, no one today would believe that a madman with this ideology of contempt for human beings could generate so much enthusiasm. How was it at all possible that Hitler found such an immense number of followers? By promising his people a solution to all their problems and by offering them a scapegoat? Certainly. But that alone would not have been enough. In order to use untold numbers of people as marionettes, he had to make his promises in the style of the domineering, violent father most of his followers knew, feared, and admired.

From the history of human sacrifice - from cannibalism to the Aztecs - we can learn how some religions have sanctified such acts in order to exonerate parents' crimes against their children. Whoever reads this history with open eyes is struck again and again by the same pattern: "If I do to others what was once done to me, then I don't need to feel all the pain I would otherwise have to experience. If I put everything in ideological or religious packaging and repeat all the lies those around me have been taught to believe, I will have many followers. If, in addition, I - like Hitler - make use of my acting talent and imitate the manner of the threatening father whom almost everyone once believed blindly and absolutely and whom everyone feared, then I'll be able to find countless helpers for every conceivable crime - all the more easily, the more absurd the crime."

The famous Milgram experiment, in which participants complied with instructions given by an authority figure to administer electric shocks of increasing intensity to other participants, has proved this very convincingly. For many adults, formerly obedient children, are just waiting for a legal form of discharge of the rage they pent up decades earlier. In the mistreatment of their own children, known as "child-rearing," or in wars and genocide, society offers them this discharge and the culturally specific label to go with it.

What point is there for us today in learning about Hitler and his history? For me, the main point is this: our knowledge will serve as a warning against our blindness and encourage us to give it up once and for all and to struggle against collective repression. This is what I do consistently in all my books in order to help people understand the psychodynamics of the mistreatment of children and its immeasurable danger for society, as demonstrated by Hitler's case. My explanations are by no means intended to suggest pity for a man as merciless as Hitler.

it was in large part owing to Hitler and his history that I became aware of the dangers of our traditional morality. We are exhorted to honor our parents and never question them no matter what they have done. Yet when I realize that millions of human beings had to die so that Adolf Hitler could keep his repression of childhood trauma intact, that millions were subjected to humiliation in concentration camps so that he never had to recognize how he had once been humiliated, then I believe that one can't point out these connections often enough in order to shed light on this unconscious production of evil. How should young people be expected to recognize and reject inhumanity and crime if these continue to be disguised instead of being pointed out as plainly as possible? Only when young people are permitted to know exactly what happened and how it could happen, only if they don't allow anything to stifle their curiosity and are not afraid of the truth, can they free themselves from the burden placed upon them by their forebears' blindness.

If Hitler's name Is no longer taboo in Germany, then these findings will also be able to bring new knowledge to light and create a new stimulus to understanding. The greatest obstacle In this regard is to deny the mistreatment one suffered as a child and to defend oneself against it at the expense of others: of children, of subordinates of partners, or of voters. As recently as 1997, more than half of the parents in West Germany were in favor of corporal punishment as a means of bringing up children - in spite of the many years of effort on the part of the Child Protection League to enlighten the public. Where does this persistent lack of awareness stem from? Why don't these parents know that physical or - as the case may be - psychological punishment constitutes degradation and mistreatment of children and always, sooner or later, has destructive consequences, whether visible or concealed? Why don't they know that with their demonstrably false claim that striking children is absolutely necessary and completely harmless they are affirming, preserving, and perpetuating a destructive tradition?

They don't know this because they are familiar from their own experience only with this form of child-rearing and had to learn at an early age to regard it as normal and harmless. In their eyes, violent methods are the only effective corrective for a child's behavior. For this reason, they construct complicated theories to explain Nazi Germany's murder of millions. That seems easier to them than to experience the pain and degradation they once felt at being beaten as children even though this could unlock the door to awareness, an awareness that would protect their children from mistreatment and themselves from their blindness as parents and voters. If they are in government, then their awareness would perhaps also save entire nations from wars and other senseless sacrifices. Countless human beings have already been killed in wars whose instigators didn't want to realize they were carrying dynamite which they were constantly trying to get rid of at the expense of other people in order to take revenge for old, highly personal wounds. Faced with even the merest possibility of a nuclear war, we must not allow ourselves to ignore this knowledge any longer. And yet we do just that: innumerable experts and officials occupy themselves daily and hourly with the consequences of child abuse without being able to know and see these consequences for what they are.

Even the most macabre childhood doesn't exonerate a criminal from the guilt that consists in his destruction of life. As an adult he has the opportunity of confronting his childhood, of not denying the horror he endured then, of experiencing the hatred that was repressed and understanding its justification. Hatred experienced consciously Is only a feeling, and feelings don't kill. But destructive actions blindly directed at ersatz objects are deeds which can cost human beings their lives and for which the perpetrator must bear the blame.

Perhaps our grandchildren will be able to say; "What good fortune that we weren't beaten like our grandparents and now are able to see things much more clearly than they did. If being beaten in childhood had been harmless, they wouldn't have been blind to Hitler's contempt for human beings; they would have seen through it immediately and rejected it, as our children do when confronted with acts of cruelty. Children who are permitted to defend themselves don't become destructive. It Is evident that destructiveness is not the inevitable fate of humankind, for the loving treatment of children could banish it from the world. The "destructive drive" slumbers in children who were once mistreated and who later don't want to know what happened to them in their past. We ourselves have no need to strike our defenseless children; we can't even imagine doing that, even when we're tired and have no patience for their questions. After all, there are so many other ways to treat children that are truly productive, respectful, and not destructive.

It is just as impossible for us to imagine having been fascinated by a Hitler. People who were treated with respect as children, who weren't drilled to become robots with the aid of mistreatment, will never want to die out of "faithfulness to the Führer" or send thousands of human beings to Stalingrad against all reason just because some madman planned it. But Hitler's generals stood at attention In the Fürher's headquarters, and all counter-arguments dissolved into fear and mental paralysis or, on the other hand, into enthusiasm when they heard him (the father) speak. This disastrous political blindness that cost millions of people their lives proves conclusively what our grandparents so hotly denied: that in every case, physical as well as psychological abuse of the child is not only harmful but highly dangerous. Not only for the individual but under certain circumstances for whole nations.

Alice Miller, 1998